Explaining Levels of Time, Space, and Knowledge

I thought it might helpful to post here what Steve Randall posted on his web site : here

Three Levels of Time, Space, and Knowledge

p. xxix, SDTS:  “As an organizing principle for an inquiry into time, space, and knowledge, it can help to think in terms of three different levels. The first level starts from our common, everyday views of how these facets of our being operate. Do the views we hold make sense? How well do they support us in our aspirations and our activities? What are the consequences of operating with this kind of understanding?”

All material is quoted from the seven works:  Time, Space, and Knowledge, Love of Knowledge, Knowledge of Time and Space, Visions of Knowledge, Dynamics of Time and Space, Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space, and Dimensions of Thought (abbreviated TSK, LOK, KTS, VOK, DTS, SDTS, and DOT).

Summary of level 1 time, space, and knowledge:

Time is divided into moments and flows linearly and out of our control, from past to future, at a constant rate. Within this flow we are limited to occupying a kind of ‘moving spot' that we call ‘the present'. We seem to ‘have' time, yet sometimes feel like we're running out of time, and can't stop the relentless flow that causes us anxiety, friction, overwhelm, and pressure.  We cannot see how experience arises nor stop the indensification process that leads to increasing stress.  

    

Space is seen as an indefinitely extended 'nothing'. Yet our experience of space can feel restrictive, disconnected or even isolated, blocked, pressured, tight, fearful, and closed in or even claustrophobic, rather than open and free.  Things ‘occupy' space, have size, volume, edges, an ‘inside' and ‘outside', and feel substantial and persistent, rather than ephemeral or weightless.  They can seem fixed, impenetrable, and opaque and can limit or block, rather than being transparent to awareness.  Different objects are felt to be distant, separately located, not occupying the same space at once.  Things and events can feel distant from or even inaccessible by our knowing.  We have a kind of apparently permanent private mental, or personal space, but this is less ‘real' than physical space.  This personal space seems independent of others and other things, and yet seems to change somewhat, depending on our feelings and connections with others.

    

 Our knowing or 'seeing' is limited to a particular observer or ‘thinker' position or 'point of view', and involves a felt separation or 'distance' between knower and known.  A knowing act takes some time, and involves a persistently felt central and local (‘here') position or point of view which directs knowing toward distant objects and events and accumulates knowledge.  We collect experience and information by acts of knowing, and build up models, systems, and theories.  Knowing and knowledge are located primarily (perhaps excluding certain sensations) inside our heads and minds.  Very often our knowing and perceiving is inaccurate and biased, depending on our accumulated experience, unresolved emotional difficulties, and current desires and fears. 

Summary of level 2:

‘Timing' occurs as a succession of experiences in the same 'spot' or ‘field', rather than establishing an extended `world out there'. Things, places, and processes become appreciated as being very fluid. Subject and object alike are seen as projections of the underlying energy of second-level time.

    

The 'quantity' of second-level 'space' is indeterminate.  While objects and the observer are distinct and independent, they are also known as interdependent and co-referring. There's an increase in personal freedom, less psychological pressure, and greater physical relaxation. All going from place to place which validates the picture of a spread out world, actually occurs as a succession of 'timed out' experiences in the same 'spot'.

    
Knowing is not so much a possession, but a luminous, transparent `attribute' of experience and mental activity through which 'existence' and 'non-existence' jointly emerge together with dichotomies such as 'subject' and 'object', 'observer' and 'observed'.

Summary of level 3:

Different times are not linked, in a way that irrevocably separates them, by their respective positions in an infinitely extended temporal series. The 'series' is a fiction. There is no 'going' and no separate places. It is as though all the friction in the world were removed.

    

 While all familiar things are separate and distributed over ordinary space, delineated partly by differences in position, they are all intimately connected insofar as their Great Space dimension is considered. Space is not contrasted to objects, and `distance between' becomes meaningless. All existence and experience is like an apparition.

    

We develop a mode of 'seeing' which is not limited to a particular position or 'point of view' at all, dissolves the 'distance' between knower and known, is not a meaning but is unlearned or nonlearned learnedness, and which is beyond the concern for 'getting', approaching, or defining. 

Descriptions of Time, level 1

Lived time is a rather curious thing. It preserves the abstract, index character of time as used in the physical sciences, while also appearing to us at times as compelling, inexorable, or merciless–it carries us along from point to point. (p. 121, TSK)

The self is … in an impoverished version of the `present', which is pointed out by the fact that the self is always up to something, going somewhere, intending something. There is an inherent directedness to the self's position, and this shows up in the tripartite structure of ordinary time–the experienced, ego-centered `present' is always coming from the past and headed toward the future. To be in this kind of present is to be frustrated and off-balance. (p. 173, TSK)

Linear time is not only an unbroken flow; rather, it is sharply divided into the three domains of past, present, and future. The present moment stands at the exact center: To one side is the past, fixed and immutable; to the other is the future, not yet known but apparently predictable in principle. (p. 181, LOK)

Overwhelming in its presence, time's rhythm marks and measures our lives. The steady, impersonal dynamic of time unnerves us, reminding us that we are not in control of our own lives and undermining the importance of the stream of desires, wishes, hopes, and fears that engage our attention. Perhaps that is why we tend to make time into the lifeless, invisible background for experience: a convenient grid for measurements that help us distinguish one set of events or experiences from another. (p. 74, VOK)

Descriptions of Time, level 2

[Attention reveals] 'timing'–as being an embodying process which leads to our restrictive conventional reality in which subject and object, things and `space' are seen as different. (p. xi, TSK)

'Time' at this second stage can be seen to be the essential force that lets moment give way to moment, and the factor which permits items within a situation or moment to have their own identities. (p. 146, TSK)

We may see all serial `timing' to be occurring in the same place, rather than establishing an extended `world out there'. That is, all going from place to place, experience to experience, which validates the picture of a spread out world, actually occurs as a succession of 'timed out' experiences in the same 'spot'. (p. 151, TSK)

Solid things, places, and directed processes seen on the first level become appreciated–in their second-level 'time' aspect–as being very fluid. This fluid quality is a central feature of 'time', which has been rendered more dry and friction-filled in order for us to play in a first-level way. (p. 161, TSK)

A focus on momentum lets us consider subject and object alike as projections of the underlying energy of second-level time. 'Time' in this second-level sense distributes experience through past and present and future, presenting the 'logos' that informs the first-level temporal order. Its dynamic allows knowing to 'build up' and interpret a world. As active vitality, 'time' is the essence of our being and our becoming, on which we feed and draw our sustenance. (p. 77, KTS)

Descriptions of Time, level 3

The Great Space perspective shows everything to be more integrated–an infinite form … without an infinitely extended temporal dimension. From this perspective, different times express only an openness and accommodation of Great Space; they do not establish temporal succession, discrete moments, or `things in time'. (p. 81, TSK)

Different times do not violate the nondistributive nature of Great Time. They are not linked, in a way that irrevocably separates them, by their respective positions in a temporal series. The 'series' is a fiction. (p. 106, TSK)

All energy whatsoever, all potential for the appearance of elements which we take as phenomena in time–volition, causation, and so on–derives from Great Time. (p. 126, TSK)

When fully appreciated, Great Time is seen to be a kind of perfectly liquid, lubricious dimension–it is quintessentially 'slippery'. For this reason–although there seems to be movement and separate places to move to on the first level, and still more open, fluid possibilities of movement on the second level–on the third level there is no 'going' and no separate places. It is as though all the friction in the world were removed–nothing can then walk away from anything else. So, from a third level view, an eternity of `straying' still leaves us very much `at home', intimately united. (p. 162, TSK)

Descriptions of Space, level 1

Objects exist, but physical space is 'nothing'–nonexistence. (p. 8, TSK)

In our ordinary space, `making room' has become `making a room–lower space is like a walled enclosure. (p. 15, TSK)

Great Space is `here' in a sense. But from a certain viewpoint, that nearness of infinity is toned down to a level tolerable for a `self', a level sufficient for `here' to `be someplace'. The infinity of Great Space then unfolds as a particular world, an indefinitely-extended field of places and times populated by innumerable particulars. (p. 75, TSK)

Space is significant for us only insofar as it is available to be occupied by 'objects', things totally separate from the space that encompasses them. (p. 120, KTS)

Descriptions of Space, level 2

Without abandoning the observed differences out of which the known world is built up, what had been known as distinct and independent is now also known as interdependent and co-referring. (p. 169, KTS)

A second-level relationship to Great Space … can manifest in infinitely many ways. Typical examples include an increase in personal freedom, less psychological pressure, greater physical relaxation, a heightening of the senses, and even parapsychological capacities, such as telepathy and clairvoyance… . But on this second level, the openness of Great Space and the relaxation of felt restrictions is still subject to a subtle, self-centered or `standard world order' interpretation. (pp. 112-13, TSK)

All going from place to place, experience to experience, which validates the picture of a spread out world, actually occurs as a succession of 'timed out' experiences in the same 'spot'. (p. 151, TSK)

We might say that the 'quantity' of this 'space' is indeterminate or even infinite. (pp. 156, TSK)

When the 'inwardness' of space 'appears' within appearance, we see clearly that space has no location, no conditioning, and no foundation. The conditions that manifest when we pursue things 'in' space do not impose their structures 'on' space . (p. 37, DTS)

Descriptions of Space, level 3

A truly comprehensive 'space'… is not set in contrast to solid, opaque 'things'. (p. xi, TSK)

This vision concerns Space, which is primordially peaceful, open. In its openness, it is an open-ended accommodating of various views, all welling up, floating, gathering within Space. Although undisturbed, it is filled with appearance. Space is therefore not static, but is instead a serene explosion of expanding creativity, filling all the eons of pasts and futures, without exhausting its openness or its capacity for exhibiting a further wealth of presences. (p. xl, TSK)

The Great Space dimension reveals an all-inclusive unity that, rather paradoxically, is not spread out over any region. (p. 62, TSK)

While all familiar things are separate and distributed over ordinary space, delineated partly by differences in position, they are all intimately connected insofar as their Great Space dimension is considered. `Distance between' becomes meaningless. (p. 112, TSK)

Seen in this way, all existence and experience is like an apparition, a surface with no substantial core, no dimensions to it, no wider and founding environment. (p. 199, TSK)

Descriptions of Knowledge, level 1

The unknowing mind perpetuates a sense of separation between 'our private world' and the 'world of others'. (p. xxxv, TSK)

We feel cut off from `the world', the object of knowledge. We try to look, to know, but in doing so we throw up a screen in front of our eyes. We relate to knowledge as though it were little drops of water, falling from different places, that we must chase after and collect in a bucket. And we try to escape in experiences that seem special in some way–pleasurable, informative, liberating, meditative, or `peak' experiences. (p. 213, TSK)

The themes of the self-oriented trend take over: a subtle grasping and consolidating, a resultant stance taken up `outside' experience, labelling and trying to `get' the content of experience, and an emphasis on the acts `of knowing' and `being happy'. Labelling, and the preoccupation with `content', obscure the fulfillment available … . (p. 266, TSK)

A pattern of want and need, punctuated by episodes of fulfillment, establishes the fundamental order within which knowledge can arise. Only a few alternatives for knowledge seem allowable: Knowledge that allows the self to identify and distinguish what is desired from what is not; knowledge of technological knowledge; and knowledge as a possible object of desire. (p. 36, LOK)

Ordinary knowledge could be described as knowledge built up through `models': explanations or descriptions of how things work within a specified domain. These models provide the mental constructs that claim to represent with some accuracy the `objective' reality that appears in conventional space and time. (p. 129, LOK)

Unfortunately, we have been trained to see knowledge as something dull and routine, something to possess and make use of like a sophisticated tool. We apply knowledge to our situation as we might try to fix a machine by following an instruction manual. But this way of knowing puts us at a distance from what we are trying to know. There is the thing and there is our knowledge of it, and the two are separate. (p. 167, VOK)

Descriptions of Knowledge, level 2

The `knowing' … cannot be appropriated by a `self'. It actually frees us from the persuasiveness of meanings. Furthermore, the exercise of this knowing does not amount to a special kind of mental event … . (p. 59, TSK)

This awareness will emerge as more than simply an attentiveness on the part of your `self'. Instead, it can be a `knowing' which is brought by `time' and keeps abreast of `time' even where the `self' cannot do so. This `knowing' can see how the `self' is set up, moment by moment, and how its consolidating tendency narrows down the vastness of `time'. (p. 175, TSK)

This knowledge was freely available: less a possession to be obtained than a luminous, transparent `attribute' of experience and mental activity. (p. xlv, LOK)

Conventional understanding accepts existence as central, framing knowledge in terms of 'what is' and 'what is not'. But an open questioning starts from no fixed basis. It looks beyond the dichotomy of existence and non-existence to focus on the knowing activity through which 'existence' and 'non-existence' jointly emerge together with fundamental dichotomies such as 'subject' and 'object', 'observer' and 'observed'. (p. 298, LOK)

Working together, inquiry and analysis need no longer rely exclusively on thoughts and concepts as tools, but instead can find knowledge directly within each moment–not isolated in the knower or hidden within the known, but freely available in a way that links the mind and the surrounding world, without necessarily locating either `mind' or `world'. (p. 301, LOK)

Descriptions of Knowledge, level 3

We can develop a mode of 'seeing' which is not limited to a particular position or 'point of view' at all. (p. 27, TSK)

Knowledge is the goal or the fruit of this vision–a fruit that is itself beyond the concern for 'getting', approaching, or defining. (p. 211, TSK)

Great Knowledge is the immediate and knowing dimension of all reality and experience. (pp. 211, TSK)

Knowingness has the quality of perfection. It is not simply a content of knowledge, for it involves no sense of a subject-object duality. It is perfect in itself because there is nothing more that needs to be known. This does not imply a self-absorption. It is perfect because it is all-inclusive. Nothing is left out or is an exception to it. (p. 219, TSK)

Great Knowledge is … . Arguments and assertions cannot single it out or refer to it. It is not a meaning… . This Knowledge is not the result of any demonstration or learning process. It is not limited or defined by the approach we take to it. It is unlearned or nonlearned learnedness. (p. 253, TSK)

There is no longer a 'looker', but instead, only a 'knowingness' which can see more broadly, from all sides and points of view at once. More precisely, the 'knowing' clarity does not radiate from a center , but is rather in everything, and everything is in it. There is neither an 'outside' nor an 'inside' in the ordinary sense, but rather a pervasive and intimate 'in' or 'within' as an open-ended knowingness. (p. 282, TSK)

Full knowledge dissolves the 'distance' between knower and known that characterizes conventional not-knowing. With no distance, an intimacy of knowing emerges, and knowledge becomes inseparable from love. (p. xlviii, LOK)